The present invention relates to mail processing systems, and more particularly, to mail processing systems employing a unique mailpiece authorization for each mailpiece of a series of mailpieces. The authorization, such as a unique identifier, is assigned in advance of delivery of the mailpieces to the carrier service and is used by the carrier service in processing the mail.
In mail preparation, a mailer prepares a mailpiece or a series of mailpieces for delivery to a recipient by a carrier service such as the United States Postal Service or other postal service or a private carrier delivery service. The carrier services, upon receiving or accepting a mailpiece or a series of mailpieces from a mailer, processes the mailpiece to prepare it for physical delivery to the recipient. Part of the carrier service processing includes reading the addresses on the mailpieces, sorting the mailpieces for delivery and determining that carrier service charges have been paid by the mailer.
Part of mail preparation has included rating and postage payment. Postage payment systems have been developed employing postage meters, which are mass produced devices for printing a defined unit value for governmental (such as tax stamps, or postage stamp) or private carrier delivery of parcels and envelopes. These postage meter systems involve both prepayment of postal charges by the mailer (prior to postage value imprinting) and post payment of postal charges by the mailer (subsequent to postage value imprinting). Postal charges (or other terms referring to postal) as used herein should be understood to mean charges for either postal charges, tax charges, or private carrier charges or the like (or postal service, tax service or private carrier service, as the case may be).
Some of the varied types of postage metering systems are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,978,457 for MICROCOMPUTERIZED ELECTRONIC POSTAGE METER SYSTEM, issued Aug. 31, 1976; U.S. Pat. No. 4,301,507 for ELECTRONIC POSTAGE METER HAVING PLURAL COMPUTING SYSTEMS, issued Nov. 17, 1981; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,579,054 for STAND ALONE ELECTRONIC MAILING MACHINE, issued Apr. 1,1986. Moreover, other types of metering systems have been developed which involve different printing systems such as those employing thermal printers, ink jet printers, mechanical printers and other types of printing technologies. Examples of these other types of electronic postage meters are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,168,533 for MICROCOMPUTER MINIATURE POSTAGE METER, issued Sep. 18, 1979 and, U.S. Pat. No. 4,493,252 for POSTAGE PRINTING APPARATUS HAVING A MOVABLE PRINT HEAD AND A PRINT DRUM, issued Jan. 15, 1985. These systems enable the postage meter to print variable information, which may be alphanumeric and graphic type information.
Postage metering systems have also been developed which employ encrypted information on a mailpiece. The postage value for a mailpiece may be encrypted together with other data to generate a digital token. A digital token is encrypted information that authenticates the information imprinted on a mailpiece such as postage value. Examples of postage metering systems which generate and employ digital tokens are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,757,537 for SYSTEM FOR DETECTING UNACCOUNTED FOR PRINTING IN A VALUE PRINTING SYSTEM, issued Jul. 12, 1988; U.S. Pat. No. 4,831,555 for SECURE POSTAGE APPLYING SYSTEM, issued May 15, 1989; U.S. Pat. No. 4,775,246 for SYSTEM FOR DETECTING UNACCOUNTED FOR PRINTING IN A VALUE PRINTING SYSTEM, issued Oct. 4, 1988; U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,645 for SECURE POSTAGE DISPENSING SYSTEM issued Oct. 10, 1989 and, U.S. Pat. No. 4,725,718 for POSTAGE AND MAILING INFORMATION APPLYING SYSTEMS, issued Feb. 16,1988. These systems, which may utilize a device termed a Postage Evidencing Device (PED), employ an encryption algorithm which is utilized to encrypt selected information to generate the digital token. The encryption of the information provides security to prevent altering of the printed information in a manner such that any change in a postal revenue block is detectable by appropriate verification procedures.
Encryption systems have also been proposed where accounting for postage payment occurs at a time subsequent to the printing of postage. Systems of this type are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,796,193 for POSTAGE PAYMENT SYSTEM FOR ACCOUNTING FOR POSTAGE PAYMENT OCCURS AT A TIME SUBSEQUENT TO THE PRINTING OF THE POSTAGE AND EMPLOYING A VISUAL MARKING IMPRINTED ON THE MAILPIECE TO SHOW THAT ACCOUNTING HAS OCCURRED, issued Jan. 3, 1989; U.S. Pat. No. 5,293,319 for POSTAGE METERING SYSTEM, issued Mar. 8, 1994; and, U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,122, for POSTAGE PAYMENT SYSTEM EMPLOYING ENCRYPTION TECHNIQUES AND ACCOUNTING FOR POSTAGE PAYMENT AT A TIME SUBSEQUENT TO THE PRINTING OF POSTAGE filed Jul. 7, 1986 by Wojciech M. Chrosny and assigned to Pitney Bowes Inc., or its Canadian Counterpart patent No. 1 301 336.
Other postage payment systems have been developed not employing encryption. Such a system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,319,562 for SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PURCHASE AND APPLICATION OF POSTAGE USING PERSONAL COMPUTER. This patent describes a system where end-user computers each include a modem for communicating with a computer at a postal authority. A secure nonvolatile memory for storing postage and remaining postage. The system is operated under control of a postage meter program which causes communications with the postal authority to purchase postage and for updating the contents of the secure nonvolatile memory. The postage printing program assigns a unique serial number to every printed envelope and label, where the unique serial number includes a meter identifier unique to that end user. The postage printing program of the user directly controls the printer so as to prevent end users from printing more than one copy of any envelope or label with the same serial number. It is asserted in the patent that by capturing and storing the serial numbers on all mailpieces, and then periodically processing the information, the postal service can detect fraudulent duplication of envelopes or labels. In this system, funds are accounted for by and at the mailer site. The mailer creates and issues the unique serial number which is not submitted to the postal service prior to mail entering the postal service mail processing stream. Moreover, no assistance is provided to enhance the deliverability of the mail beyond current existing systems.
Payment to a carrier service is securely protected due to the fact that the present invention provides for carrier service authorization for mail prior to the actual mail deposit of the mailpieces into postal stream. Moreover, if desired, only mailpieces that were pre-paid or pre-approved are accepted at the time mailpieces are delivered to and processed by the carrier service. Others mailpieces may be rejected during the processing step, as for example, by a bar code reader/sorter system or by other suitable equipment. Thus, the system provides for a high level of payment security because mailpieces are prepaid or pre-approved or authorized by the carrier prior to deposit into the postal stream.
In addition to the above, where desired appropriate security measures that are based on cryptographic techniques can be applied to provide protection against intercept of transmitted mailing lists, identification numbers and other data communicated between the mailer and the carrier service. This protects against, for example, the identification numbers for mailing list submitted by a mailer being intercepted by another mailer and used by the other mailer where the mailing list contains addresses desired by the other mailer. In such case, mailpieces with identical identification numbers could be submitted to the carrier service. In this case a dispute could arise as to which mailer has actually paid the postage. Alternatively, it may require additional recordkeeping activity by the carrier service. Any such attempt, however, at this type of interception and impersonation is avoided by the cryptographic protection.
Systems and methods embodying the present invention involve creating a mailing list including destination addresses for mailpieces to be submitted to a carrier service for delivery. A unique mailpiece identifier associated with mailpieces on the mailing list is generated by the carrier service. The unique mailpiece identifier is printed on the mailpiece with which it is associated. The mailpieces are submitted with the printed unique identifier to the carrier service. The carrier service obtains from the mailpiece the printed unique identifier. The obtained unique identifier from each said mailpiece is utilized to verify that data associated with the mailpiece has been processed by the carrier service.
In accordance with a feature of the present invention when the unique identifier has been obtained from the mailpieces, the carrier service may note this fact in the carrier records to prevent reuse of the unique identifier.
In accordance with yet another feature of the present invention, the carrier service as part of issuing the unique identification may: charge the mailer""s account or other fund depository for the carrier service charges associated with the mailpiece; and/or, assign a destination delivery code; and/or, provide address hygiene for the mailpiece. The destination delivery code may be provided to the mailer, if desired, for printing on the mailpiece or may be printed on the mailpiece by the carrier when processing the mail. Alternatively, the destination delivery code may be associated with the unique identifier and used to process the mail without printing the destination delivery code on the mailpiece.